Asima Chatterjee (1917-2006) was the first woman awarded a Doctor of Science by an Indian University–in 1944, by the University of Calcutta. A chemist, she published nearly 400 papers in national and international journals and much of her work has been extensively cited. Her work led to the development of anti-epileptic drugs & anti-malarial drugs.
She was also the first woman to be elected as the General President of the Indian Science Congress, a premier institution that oversees scientific research.
Annie J. Easley (1933-2011): computer scientist, mathematician & rocket scientist who worked for NASA. She was a leading member of the team which developed software for the Centaur rocket & one of the first African-Americans to work as a computer scientist at NASA – she was one of four African Americans of about 2500 employees.
As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the historic Moon landing, we remember some of the women whose hard work and ingenuity made it possible. The women featured here represent just a small fraction of the enormous contributions made by women during the Apollo era.
Margaret Hamilton, Computer Programmer
Margaret Hamilton led the team that developed the building blocks of software engineering — a term that she coined herself. Her systems approach to the Apollo software development and insistence on rigorous testing was critical to the success of Apollo. In fact, the Apollo guidance software was so robust that no software bugs were found on any crewed Apollo missions, and it was adapted for use in Skylab, the Space Shuttle and the first digital fly-by-wire systems in aircraft.
In this photo, Hamilton stands next to a stack of Apollo Guidance Computer source code. As she noted, “There was no second chance. We all knew that.”
Katherine Johnson, Aerospace Technologist
As a very young girl, Katherine Johnson loved to count things. She counted everything, from the number of steps she took to get to the road to the number of forks and plates she washed when doing the dishes.
As an adult, Johnson became a “human computer” for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which in 1958, became NASA. Her calculations were crucial to syncing Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the Moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. “I went to work every day for 33 years happy. Never did I get up and say I don’t want to go to work.“
Judy Sullivan, BiomedicalEngineer
This fabulous flip belongs to biomedical engineer Judy Sullivan, who monitored the vital signs of the Apollo 11 astronauts throughout their spaceflight training via small sensors attached to their bodies. On July 16, 1969, she was the only woman in the suit lab as the team helped Neil Armstrong suit up for launch.
Sullivan appeared on the game show “To Tell the Truth,” in which a celebrity panel had to guess which of the female contestants was a biomedical engineer. Her choice to wear a short, ruffled skirt stumped everyone and won her a $500 prize. In this photo, Sullivan monitors a console during a training exercise for the first lunar landing mission.
Billie Robertson, Mathematician
Billie Robertson, pictured here in 1972 running a real-time go-no-go simulation for the Apollo 17 mission, originally intended to become a math teacher. Instead, she worked with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, which later became rolled into NASA. She created the manual for running computer models that were used to simulate launches for the Apollo, Skylab and Apollo Soyuz Test Project programs.
Robertson regularly visited local schools over the course of her career, empowering young women to pursue careers in STEM and aerospace.
Mary Jackson, Aeronautical Engineer
In 1958, Mary Jackson became NASA’s first African-American female engineer. Her engineering specialty was the extremely complex field of boundary layer effects on aerospace vehicles at supersonic speeds.
In the 1970s, Jackson helped the students at Hampton’s King Street Community center build their own wind tunnel and use it to conduct experiments. “We have to do something like this to get them interested in science,” she said for the local newspaper. “Sometimes they are not aware of the number of black scientists, and don’t even know of the career opportunities until it is too late.”
Ethel Heinecke Bauer, Aerospace Engineer
After watching the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, Ethel Heinecke Bauer changed her major to mathematics. Over her 32 years at NASA, she worked at two different centers in mathematics, aerospace engineering, development and more.
Bauer planned the lunar trajectories for the Apollo program including the ‘free return’ trajectory which allowed for a safe return in the event of a systems failure — a trajectory used on Apollo 13, as well as the first three Apollo flights to the Moon. In the above photo, Bauer works on trajectories with the help of an orbital model.
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dinosaurs! fish jaws! 3D printing! Crazy robot teeth death machines (sort of)! In part 5 of our #realfossilhunter tour, Fossil Hunter Lottie meets Professor of Palaeontology Emily Rayfield:
Who’s coming to our 2nd birthday party? Fossil Hunter Lottie!
Almost unbelievably, TrowelBlazers is now a whole two years old- crazy as we still feel sort of like ‘newbies’, yet at the same time we’ve done so much, and it feels like we’ve all known each other much longer.
Over the past year there has been a wonderful assortment of TB-related activities, some of which we already talked about on our 2014 review. But even just in the past few months of 2015, we’ve been rocking it (yes, that was a geological pun).
And now, the Big Event you’ve all been waiting for: an actual TrowelBlazers doll is being launched! Fossil Hunter Lottie was made in collaboration on a voluntary basis after we were approached by manufactures Arklu, who wanted advice on making sure their palaeontology action figure was realistic. So we tweaked a few things about her field clothes, made sure she had a trowel and a geological hammer, suggested the packaging design, wrote some extra content on real life trowelblazers and safe fossil hunting, and worked out some fun launch plans.
Lottie came with us to America, on a fossil hunt with children on the Jurassic Coast where Mary Anning worked, and this week went on a UK #RealFossilHunter tour to meet palaeontologists and find out about the diversity of their careers. You can check it out our BRAND NEW YOUTUBE CHANNEL!!!
#RealFossilHunter Tour – Part 4: Fossil Hunter Lottie meets Cambrian critter expert Dr Allison Daley
The incredible evolutionary explosion of weird and wonderful animals 500 million years ago has a special, trowelblazer-tastic history — have you heard of Helen, Helena and Mary Vaux Walcott, the Burgess Shale trowelblazers? If not, read this post! And that trowelblazing tradition continues to this day — which is why Fossil Hunter Lottie was just a tad excited to make her way to the University of Oxford and sound the day with Dr Allison Daley and learn all about her Cambrian Critters…
i spent the entirety of this morning doing history, i’m currently on castro’s social policies and boy did this man suck. he shoved everyone he didn’t agree with into labour camps to be treated like war prisoners. honestly horrible
physics and chem yet again. don’t have a lot of energy because of insane deadlines. in the next two weeks i need to present some extended essay stuff, do my individual oral analysis, finish my theory of knowledge exhibition, and then work on my group four project. oh well, good times
calm day today, copied my waves hl content notes onto my notebook as a way of review, and i also had my regular two hours of math today!! just doing sinusoidal waves, and my coffee tasted delicious <3
school starts again tomorrow and i’m prepared to hit the ground sprinting because… ib
today was draining! i did my chem test, and after school i had my after school physics class, where we went over last week’s exam. just an extremely long day but on the bright side i have a break until next week thursday!
i plan to finish my history notes and hopefully my tok exhibition and start my chem extended essay
i’ve finally finished chemical kinetics and i have a chem hl paper tomorrow ! i just finished a practice paper and asked my study group abt some questions i was unsure of, honestly a good support system does wonders.
these are photos from three am today, i studied from three to six am, then school then math tuition after school, i’m so tired but i’m done for the day!! i’m honestly exhausted but in a content way <3 the best type of exhaustion
also stromae’s new album has me in a chokehold good lord not a single skip on the album
today i started my morning doing chem notes in the library before class, my favorite place to work early morning. hot coffee good music and chemistry is a great combination. i basically covered reaction intermediates, catalysts and transition states/activated complex
the physics exams went not badly! the multiple choice non-calc paper had too many calculations which threw me off but the structured paper was pretty good but doing two hours of physics was definitely taxing
i have two physics exams tomorrow and i feel a little nervous but confident. i have a multiple choice paper during class and a structured paper after school so i know tomorrow evening i’ll be wiped
i have really studied but i feel a quite nervous because some of these exams are built to trick you. but at the end of the day i’m going to apply what i’ve studied and detach myself from the grade
i finally got around to physics! i almost finished topic 4 (i just have total internal refraction standing waves remaining). i feel super relieved because i was incredibly overwhelmed just thinking about the exams i had and now i feel pretty well-prepared
i’ll probably wake up at 3am tomorrow to get some work done before school but i’m super happy with my progress today! also i finished my blog post for tomorrow but i can’t figure out what to title it. hoping it just comes to me
i realized i never actually introduced myself so here is a little about me:
i’m indian, i’m seventeen and i want to go into space research!! i do the international baccalaureate program and i’m doing my first year, these are my subjects:
physics hl
chemistry hl
english hl
math aa sl
history sl
french ab
if i start listing my interests it’ll be a never-ending list, so let me be broad: arts, humanities (except econ and business), sciences, fashion, and english
i have a big dog whom i adore <3 and there’s only one rule on this blog:
chemistry never lets me rest. i organize my topics colour-wise, so until i finish the hl content for chemical kinetics there’s going to be tonsss of orange.
i’m definitely procrastinating physics solely because i have a test next thursday and i feel overwhelmed just thinking about it. it’s all the sl content for waves, and it’s easy i just don’t want to do it.
chemistry, yet again. though also physics and english. i worked on simple harmonic motion, rates of reaction and my article for a blog due on tuesday. honestly a great great day. i really enjoyed working and it’s been a while since i’ve enjoyed working
